Glorious
by NotAMuggleMiss
Summary: The first time Lavender opened her eyes after the Battle of Hogwarts, she was immediately met with the pity in her mother's gaze. EWE HP/LB


Written for Sing-Me-A-Rare: The Soundtracks, Winner of Best Female Lead (thank you everyone!)  
Song Prompt - This Is Me - Ke$ha - The Greatest Showman

Much love to my Beta, I_was_BOTWP, who is a constant source of support, kindness and excellent editing.

Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, and Warner Bros. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

Work Text:

"But I won't let them break me down to dust

I know that there's a place for us

For we are glorious"

-The Greatest Showman

The first time Lavender opened her eyes after the Battle of Hogwarts, she was immediately met with the pity in her mother's gaze. She looked around and realised she must be at St. Mungo's. The last thing she remembered from before she woke was the crazed look in the eyes of Fenrir Greyback as he barrelled towards her with his claws and fangs out. And then there was only pain, though it wasn't clear to her if the pain was from then or now.

She shuddered.

"How long have I been here?" she asked her mother. The sound that came out of her mouth didn't sound anything like her. For a girl who was accustomed to being the loudest, most exuberant person in any room, she found herself shocked by the small, raspy sound of her own voice.

Her mother gasped, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth, as though she could take the noise back before her daughter heard.

"It's been five weeks…" Mrs. Brown whispered.

Lavender was shocked. What could possibly have happened to her that was so terrible she would spend five weeks unconscious? Her body ached all over, the way she could remember her arm being sore from Skele-grow she had taken after falling and breaking it as a child. She wondered how many of her bones had needed to be re-grown to hurt this much. Even her face was painful, she could feel the swollen tissue pulse with every movement. She could still feel the way the skin around her mouth had pulled and tugged in strange ways when she had tried to speak. She knew she had been attacked by Greyback, it slowly dawned on her that she was probably disfigured. Her next thought was to ask for a mirror, until a mere moment later when she was horrified to realize she didn't even know who had won the war.

"The war!" she nearly shouted in alarm, trying to sit up in her hospital bed.

"Shh! Darling! It's over. You-Know-Who is dead," her mother interrupted her, reaching out to gently push her back down to the mattress. "Thank Merlin, you're alive."

The words had fallen from her lips so softly that Lavender had nearly missed the way they turned up at the end, as though her mother were asking a question instead of stating a fact. It stung. Surely, death couldn't have been preferable to a few scars. People had a tendency to underestimate her because she relied on her looks, but if the war had taught her anything, it was that she was smarter than they thought and stronger than she looked.

"What happened to me?" she asked, more quietly. She could already feel her eyes beginning to close against her will, she felt exhausted beyond anything she had ever felt before.

"Another day, my darling girl," her mother soothed her. "You need to rest."

Lavender closed her eyes and fell asleep to the sound of her mother's quiet sobbing.

* * *

The first time Lavender saw her own reflection after the Battle of Hogwarts was the day after she got home from St. Mungo's. They had kept her there for another two weeks once she woke up, filling her with nutrition potions and covering her body with healing salves and bandages, careful to avoid letting her see. Pity shone in all their eyes every time she managed to make eye contact. Nobody had granted her request for a mirror, turning away instead, as though embarrassed by her.

Her mother insisted on covering her in glamours when the time came to bring her home. Lavender protested. She wasn't ashamed of surviving, but she decided in the end that it wasn't worth the argument. When they arrived home, all the lights had been dimmed. All the mirrors in the house had been removed. Mrs. Brown had insisted it was for her own good, it was better this way.

That was why, at dawn the next morning, Lavender was charming a large landscape portrait in her room into a reflective surface. It seemed even her mother underestimated her talents. Taking a deep breath, she looked up to stare herself in the eye. Her eyes looked like her own, though somewhat hardened. As her gaze began to wander, she took in the four thick ropey scars that started near her left temple and crossed her face to the right side, ending below her ear. There were jagged white lines along the edges of her forehead, as though someone had tried to rip her hair out and only managed to stretch the skin. Her neck was covered in a mangled mess of skin that almost looked like it had been torn off and then lumped back on, like pieces of butchered putty. There were teeth marks on the right side, disappearing beneath the fabric of her nightgown, which was covering her shoulder. She quickly pulled the gown over her head and dropped it on the floor at her feet, leaving her bare in the mirror.

Her right shoulder and chest were littered with scarred bite marks. Even her breasts had been viciously clawed at, leaving more of the same thick ropey scars as those marring her face. Part of her wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all, but the longer she looked, the more she thought she looked like a warrior.

She smiled when she realised that she hardly even felt bitter. Every last mark on her body was a testament to her strength. She had been broken down to dust and survived.

She was startled from her thoughts by the crash of a tea tray hitting the wood floor. Whirling around, wand still in her hand and stark naked, she saw her mother's horrified expression and what must have been her breakfast littering the floor of her room near the door.

"Oh! My baby! Why would you look!?" Mrs. Brown lept towards her, pulling out her wand. "Let me glamour those for you, you're still weak. You shouldn't display your shame, much less have to see this horrible affliction yourself."

"No!" Lavender said firmly. "I'm not scared to be seen as I am, mother. I won't be wearing glamours."

"Come now, dear! It will only take a minute and I'll have you looking just like yourself again," her mother insisted.

"This is me."

At her mother's alarmed expression, she shook her head and stepped forward to place a hand on the woman's shoulder.

"The daughter you had before the war will never exist again. I refuse to make apologies for that," she spoke calmly.

Mrs. Brown gently shook off Lavender's hand and backed out of the room, leaving the mess of tea, food, and dishes where they had fallen.

* * *

The first time Lavender left her house alone after the Battle of Hogwarts was not the meticulously planned outing her mother had insisted it should be. It had taken another month after she was released from the hospital for her physical strength to return to normal, and her father had adamantly refused that she go out while she was still too weak to protect herself. Nobody had come to visit her, either, and her time at home had been rather isolating.

Before then, she had only been permitted to leave for the twice-weekly visits to see a mind healer, chaperoned by her mother like a small child might be. Mrs. Brown had requested permission to floo directly into the healer's office, on account of her daughter's disfigurement being shocking for the general public to witness, and it had been granted. Lavender had rolled her eyes but had decided, once again, that the situation was not worth the argument it would cause to oppose her, though she had continued to hold firm on refusing to be glamoured.

The healer, along with her mother, seemed to maintain that she was in a state of denial about her attack and its aftermath. He tried to explore whether she might still be in shock from her trauma, thinking it could be a plausible reason why she refused to cover up her scars. He seemed genuinely confused when she demonstrated over and over again that she was of perfectly sound mind; she just didn't feel the need to hide behind the mirage of the person she had once been. She explained how she felt changed by the war, but secure in her own skin. The healer told her it was impossible to adjust so fast and without turmoil. Lavender had desperately wanted to ask him if surviving the reign of the Carrows at Hogwarts for a year was long enough for him, but she bit her tongue. They all seemed to think the attack at the Last Battle had to be the moment that changed her. While it may have altered her body, they refused to see that her mind had been on the path of change for months before that day. The scars only completed the transformation.

Mrs. Brown had urged her to carefully consider what she would wear and where she would be seen on her first outing since the end of the war. She had practically begged her to accept a glamour, at the very least on her face.

Which is why Lavender had waited for her mother to go out to tea at a friend's house before leaving to visit Diagon Alley. Instead of the concealing robes her mother had recommended, she wore fitted grey trousers and a vee-neck blouse covered in tiny blue flowers that matched her eyes. She wore her blonde curls swept up into a braid, as had been her custom in the past year at school.

When she arrived at the apparition point near the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron, she turned and made her way toward the shops. The more she moved through the street, the more attention she seemed to attract. She smiled and waved at acquaintances or people she recognized, but all she got were stiff smiles and averted gazes in return. People stared, some looked terrified, others had only pity painted over their features. After several minutes, she felt almost as though she were in the wrong somehow, as though she wanted only to remind all these innocent people of the terrible times they had only just lived through. She lifted her chin, trying to salvage her dignity and did her best to avoid making eye contact with anybody as she continued along.

She was turning to enter a tea shop when she heard her name being called.

"Lavender! Wait!" the voice shouted from several dozen feet behind her.

She turned and saw him running in her direction. Harry Potter was dodging shoppers and attracting quite a bit of attention himself when he finally stopped in front of her.

"I...I'm…" he stammered in greeting as he looked down at her. His eyes were full of unreadable emotions.

"If you're about to say you're sorry, you'd better stop before you start, Harry Potter. I don't want any more pity, least of all yours," Lavender said crisply, her eyes going hard as she stared back at him.

"No!" he stammered. "I was going to say...I'm glad you're feeling better. I'm relieved to see you up and about." He ran a hand through his hair in what appeared to be a nervous gesture.

"Oh."

"I tried to come by and visit you, in the hospital, and again at home a few weeks ago. I, er, was visiting everyone from the DA, you see," he said awkwardly. "Your mum said you wouldn't see anyone…"

Lavender felt a moment of fury upon understanding that her mother had been turning her friends away without consulting her. She had known the woman was embarrassed about her scars, but to purposely isolate her and lie to her about it? No, she refused to let the shame she had felt sink in.

"My mother lied," she said pleasantly. "Would you like to have afternoon tea with me?" she smiled as she gestured towards the shop.

"I'd love to." Harry smiled as he reached over to hold the door for her.

As they both stepped inside, every person in the shop turned to look at them and the regular sounds of afternoon tea quickly gave way to silence. Lavender tried not to show her frustration, but as she looked over at Harry, it was plain he was equally upset by the attention.

"On second thought, would you like to come over to my house, instead? " he said. "I seem to have this effect on people whenever I'm in public," he muttered.

"You too, eh?" she joked with a giggle. "Lead the way then!"

They soon walked back down the way she had come and apparated to Grimmauld Place, where an elf named Kreacher served them a lovely afternoon tea. Harry didn't mention her scars once.

* * *

The first time Lavender brought someone home to meet her parents after the Battle of Hogwarts was a spur of the moment decision. It had been months since her first chance meeting with Harry in Diagon Alley and they had quietly continued to see each other since. They had been fast friends at first, not the way they had known each other at Hogwarts, but in the way, one becomes close to a person with whom they share a difficult and rare point of view. Things had progressed without any fanfare from there to a tentative pushing of the boundaries of friendship and eventually into a comfortable intimacy. Harry had first used the word love only a fortnight earlier, which she had joyfully reciprocated, and with only a week left before Christmas, she felt it was high time to introduce him to her parents.

She had convinced Harry to accompany her home after their afternoon walk in a muggle park near his house. They were making their way to her father's study to speak with him, but she stopped abruptly before entering when she heard her mother's voice from within the room. She turned to Harry and put a finger to her lips, indicating he should keep quiet.

"But Henry, how can she possibly continue to ignore than everything has changed?" Mrs. Brown said with a sense of urgency.

"Now, Martha, you know she is just trying her best to move on with her life. Give her time," her father replied.

"What kind of life can we expect her to have! Looking like that! And flaunting it, too, like she's proud of herself for getting mangled by that Beast. She had so many prospects when she was beautiful, we could even have let her marry for love. But nobody will love her as she is now," her mother lamented.

Lavender could not listen any longer. She burst into the room, dragging Harry behind her by the hand. Both of her parents turned to them with startled expressions on their faces. She took a deep breath. "Mum, Dad, I'd like you to meet my boyfriend," she stated with a controlled look of fury in her eyes.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown continued to stare at them, dumbfounded.

"We've been seeing each other since the end of September, I thought it was high time I bring him around to introduce him," Lavender continued.

"But that's Harry Potter!" exclaimed her mother. "You must be joking!"

'Martha, my dear, perhaps you've said enough this evening," her husband jumped in, interrupting her. He stepped forward and stuck out his right hand with a polite smile. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance Mr. Potter."

"It's nice to meet you, Mr. Brown. Please, call me Harry," Harry managed to squeeze out nervously as he shook the proffered hand, even while Lavender stood clutching his other one with her chin held up defiantly.

"You can't be serious, darling," her mother tried again. "He's the most visible wizard in Britain! You can't be seen photographed with him looking like that!"

Harry turned to her mother with an incredulous look on his face and her father was once again opening his mouth to speak, but Lavender would not let the sharp words cut her down.

"He loves me. As I am. And I am deserving of his love. There is nothing I am not worthy of." she spoke with a fierce conviction. "The scars on my skin will not stop me from loving him, and neither will you."

The room was deathly silent as all its occupants stared at Lavender. After a few moments, Mr. Brown cleared his throat and the spell was broken. Mrs. Brown burst into tears.

"Why don't you and Harry go out to dinner, Poppet?" her father said apologetically. "We'll be happy to have him back next week for a Christmas visit, right then?"

Lavender nodded and the young couple retreated quickly as her father turned to comfort his wife. They walked down the hall and stopped in front of the main floo in the front hall.

"I've never stood up to my mother like that," she whispered. " I hope I didn't look like a spoiled child…"

"You were glorious. I've never seen you like this," Harry said, turning to face her. "You are glorious," he said reverently, tucking one of her errant curls behind her ear and smiling at her shyly.

"And my scars?" she asked quietly.

"They don't make any difference to me. They helped make you the woman I love," Harry answered, a picture of sincerity and quiet certainty.

He leaned in to kiss her softly and Lavender thought the world might as well have disappeared. She leaned back and looked up into his eyes.

"Then maybe, this is who I'm meant to be," she said.

He smiled and kissed her again.


End file.
